


Fever

by vinnie2757



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Explicit Language, F/M, Fever, Fluff, Pre-Crisis, Pre-Relationship, Sick Character, also hes desperately in love but he cant admit it, before game but after the launch, cid has to grow up for five minutes, master of denial, shera is sick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:41:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24809440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vinnie2757/pseuds/vinnie2757
Summary: Shera is a hard worker, but working too hard leaves her sick.Cid, naturally, cannot let anyone else take care of her, even if he is told it's his fault in the first place.
Relationships: Cid Highwind/Shera
Kudos: 11





	Fever

**Author's Note:**

> I love writing these two so much, they're so fun. One day I might even write a post-game actual relationship thing for them, imagine that!
> 
> Enjoy, my lovelies~!

The winter comes in hard, the winter after the launch fails. Cid is still barely speaking to Shera, and she’s – well, she’s got to be okay with this, she doesn’t really have a choice. He’s built the _Highwind_ , and is tinkering about with the _Bronco_ if he’s not yelling at the trainee pilots, and she busies herself with her own engineering kids, and keeping the house going, and generally just occupying herself with fifteen and one things she doesn’t entirely know she’s doing until she’s done them. The autumn is a chilly one, and she bundles up in sweaters much earlier than she had in previous autumns, and then one morning she wakes up with a runny nose.

The Captain, naturally, in his abrasive, desperate-to-seem-unhappy sort of way, tells her that she better not give it to him, and that she can fuck off if she thinks that she’s getting to slack on her duties.

‘I don’t intend to, Captain,’ she assures him, ‘it’s just a cold, it’ll be gone in a week or so.’

It’s still there two weeks later, and when she gets up one morning in that second week, she finds that he’s already awake and has started on the tea. She feels a little woozy about the edges, but chalks it up to being awake half the night with an utterly horrid phlegmy cough that she couldn’t seem to shift. The house is cold, too, this morning, which probably isn’t helping at all, but there’s not a lot she can do about it beside wear long sleeves under her sweater and hope she warms through.

‘Kept me up,’ he says, by way of explanation for his being up and about before her, ‘with all that coughing.’

She coughs into her elbow, and apologises, clears her throat when it sounds a little too scratchy.

‘I’ll try and keep it down.’

He wrinkles his nose, eyebrows creased, but lets her take over the tea, and goes outside for a smoke. He’s outside not half a minute when there’s a thump and a bang and a soft not-curse from Shera.

‘Fuck you do thi – you look like _shit_ ,’ he tells her, because she does.

He never really pays attention to her these days, outside of the glances he can’t help but take at her, but she looks – she looks _ill_. She’s simultaneously pale and flushed, arms clutched about herself and shivering even though sweat is prickling at her hairline, and she’s – it takes her a moment to register that he’s there, and then another moment before she seems to register that she dropped the kettle, that it’s spilled water all over the floor.

‘Fuck sake,’ he says, when she reaches blindly for a cloth and nearly burns her hand on the stove, which is _still on_. He puts a hand on her arm, directs her across the kitchen and to the table, and she flinches, blinks at him like a fucking idiot. ‘Sit down before you fall down.’

She blinks at him again. ‘I’m okay, Captain,’ she tells him, and goes to step forward, but is met with his hand against her forehead.

‘Fucking _liar_ ,’ he snorts, and grabs her shoulders, pushes her down into a chair. ‘You’re hot.’

‘Why Captain,’ she slurs back, and her eyes are going by the second, and Cid – he –

He doesn’t know what to do.

It’s a fever, and she’s burning up, and she needs to rest, he knows that much. He eyeballs her, huddling into herself and shivering, as he picks the kettle up and tosses a cloth onto the floor to soak up the water.

‘There’s a mop,’ she says, and points in entirely the wrong direction.

‘Shera,’ he replies, and she wobbles in her seat as she looks up at him.

‘Yeah?’

‘You’re sick.’

‘It’s fine, Captain.’

‘Sure it is.’

He can’t keep her inside; she assures him, after nearly spilling her tea twice, that she just hadn’t slept well, and he knows it’s bullshit, and he knows she knows that she’s bulllshitting, but he can’t stop her. He’s not her father, or her – he shudders at the thought – husband, and he certainly can’t make her do anything.

So he lets her go. He knows it’s the wrong thing to do, because she’s going to get herself hurt, but he lets her go. Even though it’s a fool’s move, letting her go, he’s not so stupid as to not watch her. Off she goes, across to the rocket, where she’s giving some engineers a talk on the wiring of the rocket, and he stands on the path for a minute, watching the sluggishness of her steps, the way she’s huddling herself. She’s also not going in a straight line, but that’s neither here nor there.

He has trainees waiting for him to explain for the fiftieth time how to steer a fucking plane, but he watches her disappear behind the rocket, and he hesitates. She won’t be on her own there, but the engineers are all but children, they’re going to be useless if she does hit the deck, as it were.

So he looks at the time, and he says, ‘Cid, you’re a grown man, behave like one,’ and he goes after her.

‘Shera!’ he hollers, and she winces, clutches her head as she turns to him.

The engineering kids in front of her are looking baffled at the state of her, and Cid can’t blame them.

‘Sorry, kids,’ he says, and grabs her arm, ‘this one needs to _go home_ and _rest_.’

He says it to her, trying to meet her eyes, but it’s obvious she’s not seeing him as clearly as he’s seeing her.

‘I’m fine,’ she tries, or, he’s sure, she’s trying to say. It’s barely half of a syllable that comes out of her mouth.

‘Mm-hm, sure. Come on, four-eyes, home time for you. Kids, I’m sure you’ve got some work to do independently.’

‘She told us she was going to give us a report to do on the differences in wiring across the models.’

‘Go speak to Livas,’ he says, and Shera’s wobbling, so he puts an arm around her shoulders, holds her upright. ‘He’s got all the reports about the early rockets. If I remember, I’ll fish out the blueprints.’

‘In the spare room,’ Shera mumbles, and her face turns into him, ‘oh, Captain, I don’t feel so good.’

He manages to parse her slurring in time to turn her away and hold her waist so she doesn’t throw up on either of them. The kids all make noises, the way kids do, and Cid tells one of the sensible-looking girls to go to the _Shanghai_ and ask Reine to meet him back at his house.

‘Tell her Shera’s sick,’ he says, ‘should hurry her up a bit.’

The girl takes off at a jog, which is hilarious to see when all the engineers are spindly little things in lab coats. Cid makes sure Shera’s arm is secure in his, and they begin the trek back to the house. She’s clutching her face, and shivering more than walking, and he wonders how much stick he’d catch if he just picked her up and carried her.

They make it back to the house, and he drops her into a chair at the table, and about five minutes go by before Reine’s at the door, apron tight around her waist.

‘Shera’s sick?’ she asks, and Cid, who has been hovering and not entirely certain what to do about this mess of girl at the table, gestures at her.

‘Fever,’ he says, and Shera coughs helpfully, and Cid winces, because it sounds awful now that he’s actually listening to it.

‘I knew she had a cold,’ Reine says, and comes to rest her hand against Shera’s forehead, the other taking her wrist. ‘You haven’t stopped working, have you?’

This, to Shera, who blinks slowly, and shakes her head when the question’s been digested.

‘Of course not. How’s your chest?’

She gives Reine a disgusted look, and then coughs some more.

‘Hurts,’ she manages to get out between coughs.

Reine hums. ‘You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?’

Shera hesitates, and then nods.

‘What?’ Cid asks, and jams his hands in his pockets, can feel himself about to wring them. ‘What is it?’

‘Pneumonia. She’s a foolish girl, she should have stopped when the cold didn’t shift.’

It isn’t often they see Reine get cross. She gets upset at chaos in the bar, and customers of the Inn making a mess, and she’ll have a few words if one of the boys does something especially stupid. But to see her cross – Cid is glad she’s not directing it at him, but then she turns, and he feels like he’s staring down his mother over his choice to enlist.

‘You,’ she says, jabbing a finger in his direction, ‘you’re going to have to take care of her. I’m confident in saying this is partially _your_ fault.’

Cid says nothing for a moment; he has a hundred things he could say, but they’d only earn him a clip around the ear. Then he says, quietly, ‘what do I do?’

Reine looks at Shera again, who’s eyelids are drooping, and her shoulders slackening. She looks rotten, and needs to rest.

‘You’ll have to stay with her, the fever will get worse before it gets better, and – the spare room, can you make that back into a bedroom, just for the time being? It’s safer for her to be down here than trying to navigate those ridiculous stairs of yours when the snow comes in, she’ll break her neck.’

Cid nods, and gets to work clearing the worst of the clutter out of the spare room, dumps it in the garage for now. The fold-out bed won’t be the most comfortable in the world, but he supposes if she’s sleeping, she’ll not be conscious enough to notice. Reine takes Shera upstairs while he sorts the space out, and gets her changed into comfortable pyjamas, gets her bedlinen and a few essential items, and the poor girl’s barely awake, leaning heavily against whatever upright surface she has.

‘I’m fine,’ she says, and Reine brushes her hair from her face.

‘I’m going to say this once, darling,’ she says, leans down to meet Shera’s hazy eyes. ‘Let him take care of you. Don’t do anything for yourself that you can make him do. He deserves it.’

‘No,’ she protests, shakes her head, and then clutches her eyes. ‘No.’

‘Yes. I’m saying it now, Shera. Do as you are told. Get into bed, go to sleep, and make him do the hard work.’

She’s sure Shera would be giving her a scowl, but her eyes are closed, and she’s wavering.

‘Come on,’ she says, and gives her a shake. ‘Just a flight of stairs, then you can sleep.’

Shera blinks herself awake, gives her head an uncomfortable-looking shake, and gets to wobbly feet.

They make it down the stairs by the skin of their teeth, and Cid’s waiting for them, takes the bedlinen from Reine’s arms and he doesn’t rush, because Cid is not a rushing sort of man, but he goes at a decent speed to the spare room to get it ready for them. As soon as Reine’s got Shera in the bed, and smoothed her hair out of her face, she pulls the door to, and takes Cid to one side.

‘The fever will get worse,’ she says, ‘she’s going to cough for _weeks_ , and it’s going to drive you absolutely insane. She’s going to be in pain, and she’s going to be out of it for a week or so before it starts to get better. Be gentle with her, for the love of the planet, just _be gentle_.’

He bristles. ‘You think I can’t be gentle?’

‘I think you’ve never seen pneumonia before and you don’t have a clue what’s coming your way,’ Reine says, and raises an eyebrow when he doesn’t challenge it.

‘She’ll be okay?’ he asks, and Reine nods.

‘Keep her hydrated, and let her rest, and she’ll be alright in a few weeks. It’ll be a while before she’s _right_ , maybe the summer before it’s all gone from her system.’

‘We can’t just – use a Cure?’

‘No,’ Reine says, ‘you know as well as I do that Cure doesn’t work for this kind of thing. And no, potions don’t work either. You’ve got to ride it out. I’ll get one of the boys to bring by some food for you, so that you don’t have to worry about it.’

Cid takes this in, and nods.

‘Thank you,’ he says, because as much as Reine’s grating on him, with the silent judgement, he knows to mind his manners.

Reine nods. ‘Any problems, just give me a shout, and I’ll come and take a look. But she’ll be fine. Don’t panic. Oh, and don’t smoke around her, her lungs are the weakest part of her right now, you’ll make it worse.’

Easy for her to say, Cid thinks as she leaves and shuts the door. He’s already itching for a cigarette, and he checks on Shera, asleep and – she’s not beautiful, she’s sweaty and open-mouthed, all dry nose and lips, dark circles under her eyes, but she’s _beautiful_ – she’s resting, that’s the important thing. He nods to himself, and leaves the door open, disappears out the front to smoke. He nearly inhales the cigarette when he hears her coughing, and stamps it out to rush back inside. She’s hacking up phlegm, and it’s ugly. He sits on the side of the bed, runs his hands over her head and shoulder, rubs circles into her back.

‘Sounds bad,’ he says, and he’s not surprised that the only answer he gets is a groan.

He stays until she drifts off again, which doesn’t take long at all, barely a minute, and then he goes to fill a jug with water, get her favourite mug and put it on the dresser for her, ready for when she wakes.

It’s really strange, staying in for the rest of the day. Isak brings by a box of groceries, enough for him for a few days, and a few jars of soup.

‘Shera’s sick?’ he asks.

‘Yeah. She’ll be alright.’

Isak hovers for a moment, then rubs the back of his head. ‘Give her my best.’

And Cid, for a reason he absolutely does not know, not even a little bit, feels something turn over in his belly, bitter and green.

‘Will do,’ he says, and shuts the door on Isak’s face.

It’s been the better part of six years since he cooked for himself, and he’s not _bad_ at it, but he’s not as good as Shera or Reine. Food is food, though, and he’s glad for it. Shera stirs at the smell, and he looks in on her, finds her rubbing bleary eyes and coughing up a storm.

‘Smell?’ she asks, and he tells her he’s making dinner. ‘No.’

‘No?’

She shakes her head, and then her cheeks puff, and it’s only life experience that lets him grab the bowl he had the foresight to get for her, and shove it under her chin in time for her to throw up.

‘No to food,’ he nods, and touches her head. ‘Got it.’

She moans, and clutches her face. He thinks he hears an apology.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ he says.

He makes sure she drinks some water, and then goes and empties the bowl and washes it out, puts it back ready for the next time.

After dinner, after he’s had a cigarette and the sky has started to sprinkle stars out between the clouds, he goes to the garage and fishes out the blueprints she’d been sure were stocked in there. It’s been years since he looked at them, and they don’t make him teary, but his throat itches. He’d been so close, and if it hadn’t been for Shera, he’d have made it. Okay, if she’d been right about the oxygen tank, which she wasn’t, he’d be dead, too. But he supposes it’s neither here nor there. He’s stuck in this shithole town now, and she – she needs him.

He drags the armchair to the room, and listens to the buzz of the electrics, the sound of her breath. It’s an uncomfortable chair for sleeping, and he’s not tired enough, but he finds himself sleeping anyway.

The first couple of days pass like this. She sleeps through most of it, coughing when she isn’t, delirious, utterly unaware of what’s going on, and he barely manages to get soup and water down her neck when she’s awake enough to swallow. At least if she’s sleeping, she’s not getting herself into trouble. He finds things to occupy himself; marks trainees’ papers, works on the shell of the car he bought, because building it from scratch was better than giving ShinRa money for a new one. He even cleans the floor. It’s not quite the eat-your-dinner-off that Shera gets it, because he’s not entirely certain what she does to make that happen, but it’s a pretty bloody good job, if he says so himself.

He sleeps in the chair in the room with her, and spends more time watching her than he does sleeping, but he’s been like that for most of his adult life, barely sleeping, and it’s the first time he’s really been able to watch her sleep. It’s not representative, of course, because she’s sick, and the fever’s still awfully strong, but he watches her anyway.

Reine stopped by, and Livas’ wife too, and he’d slammed the door in their faces, because they’d offered to take over, and he doesn’t _need_ anyone to take over. He’s managing, he’s doing pretty well, he thinks. Sure, he’s back and forth to the door every five minutes because the worry in his gut manifests as a cigarette, but he can’t smoke in the house if it’s going to make her worse, and he’s sure letting all the cold air in isn’t helping at all.

Finding things to occupy himself becomes harder as the days wear on, and that just gives him time to think, and thinking makes him angry. He’s angry at himself, mostly, for letting Shera get so sick. He’d seen the cold, and he’d heard the cough, and he should have told her to pack it in, to take a couple of days to rest. Instead, he’d ignored her, and told her she was keeping him awake at night, and now look at her. She’s feverish and out of it, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do if she doesn’t get better.

He can’t make a decent cup of tea, for a start.

‘Shera?’ he asks, one evening, because she’s frowning, and grumbling, and her breathing’s all over the place. Reine had warned him about breathing, that her lungs were weak, that if her breathing gets strained, short and sharp, he needs to call her.

He touches her arm, clammy and warm to the touch, and straightens the cuff of her t-shirt, which he’s not entirely sure isn’t his. It’s far too big on her, hanging loose around her shoulders, and it’s old, worn at the hems. She startles, and jolts awake, and her hands scrabble for something, find his arms.

‘Captain?’ she gasps, and he touches her face, sweaty and creased with worry, brushes her hair away from her face.

‘It’s me,’ he assures her, and it’s only when she gives a shuddering little gasp, that he realises she’s crying. ‘You’re safe.’

‘You’re alive,’ she breathes, and he doesn’t know what to do.

He knows fevers are a fucker for giving you bad dreams, that the brain is overworked trying to flush something nasty out of your system, and it makes for some wild dreams, but he’s never had to _comfort_ someone before. The boys all got on with their bad dreams, and Shera had never had one, as far as he’s known, so he’s at a loss.

But she’s crying, and she’s clutching at him, and he looks at her, looking at him, so lost, so terrified, and he kicks his boots off, shuffles her over to swing his legs up and lie down next to her. It’s all he knows to do; in those first months after his father had died, he’d been so young, but his mother had always lain next to him when the nightmares woke him, had always been a physical presence. So he reasons that if Shera’s broken up about him being alive, the least he can do is reassure her that he’s not only alive, but there.

She touches his arms, stares at his face.

‘You,’ she sighs, and he nods.

‘Me.’

She looks at him for a few more moments and then breathes, sighs, closes her eyes.

‘I dreamt,’ she starts, slow, quiet, and he takes her in, the heat coming off of her breath, the smell of it, which isn’t the greatest, because she’s brushed her teeth once a day, and thrown up in between, but it’s hers, and he can’t fault it. ‘I dreamt you’d gone to space.’

He wants to reply, but knows it’ll be mean, harsh, so he keeps quiet.

‘You were – gone. Lost. I lost you up there.’

‘Dead?’ he asks.

‘Gone,’ she sighs, and he wipes a tear off her nose.

She falls back into sleep not long after that. He lies there for several hours, watches her, brushes the hair out of her face and tucks it behind her ear.

The fever breaks that night, begins to come down. She’s a little more coherent in the morning, and he blinks his eyes open – hadn’t known he’d fallen asleep to do so – to find her watching him.

‘Captain,’ she breathes, and he hums.

‘You’re awake,’ he breathes back, and her eyelashes flutter.

‘I’m – where?’

‘Spare room,’ he says, and pushes onto an elbow to look at her properly.

In the dim light coming through the window with its thin curtains, she looks grey, pale. Better than the flush he knows is actually on her face. Her hair is matted, greasy, and her eyes are sticky, her mouth dry.

‘Do you think you can handle tea?’ he asks, and brushes a hand down her arm, feels the warmth of her skin.

She’s still feverish, but it’s better, he assures himself as she tells him she’d like to try, it’s coming down. She’s seeing him when she looks at him, which is more than he could have said yesterday.

He clatters about a little bit more than strictly necessary when he makes the tea, and he doesn’t question how she takes it – he might have pretended, in another circumstance, to not have a clue, but now is not the time – just does it and takes it through. She’s pushed herself upright, and she looks dizzy, but she smiles at him when he enters with the mug, hands it to her and waits until she’s got both hands on it before he lets go. Sitting in the chair with his own brew, he rubs an eyebrow and watches her from the corner of his eyes.

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Awful,’ she replies, and coughs. He winces, and she wipes her nose on her arm.

For a few minutes, they’re quiet. She sips at her tea, and he yawns, eyes flicking across the grain of the wood of the wall.

‘Captain,’ she says, ‘if you need to go do other things, I’ll be alright.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ he snorts. ‘I’m right where I need to be. You’re sick, and I’m going to look after you, and that’s all there is to it.’

She purses her lips, and looks into her mug.

‘Thank you,’ she says.

She spends most of the day sleeping, but she tries some toast mid-morning, and keeps it down until she tries to eat soup at dinner and then throws it all back up.

‘Hey,’ he sighs, when she tears up over the bowl. He sits next to her, rubs her back, assures her that it’s fine. ‘You’re sick, and you’re going to _be_ sick, and that’s okay. You don’t have to get upset.’

‘I’m keeping you from your work,’ she says.

He snorts, rests a hand on her neck. ‘If I wanted to work, I’d have got Reine or fuck sake, I’d have got _Isak_ to come look after you.’

She winces at the name. ‘Isak,’ she says.

‘He came by,’ Cid shrugs. ‘Asked me to give you his best. Wouldn’t give you his worst, to be honest.’

‘That’s unkind.’

He supposes it is, but then so was what she did.

‘It was a long time ago,’ he says, because they were young then.

Technically, they’re still young now; he’s not yet thirty, and she’s got three years of catching up to do before she can say the same. She’s at least got the luxury of saying she’s in her mid-twenties, whereas he’s firmly late.

It was hardly a long time ago, but Shera’s not in a fit state to argue it, not that she would anyway. Her lack of a spine is so disheartening at times.

Well, whatever, he can’t argue with her right now, and she wouldn’t argue with him anyway, which is half of the fucking problem.

‘Either way,’ he says, ‘I’m right where I need to be.’

And wants to be, he’s realising. Not in these circumstances, but with her, at her side. He’s going to make himself sick at this rate, thinking like this.

She looks at him, soft eyelashes, and tentative smile. He smiles back, and excuses himself to go and smoke.

The snow comes in that night, and he watches it gather on the windowsill above her sleeping head. She’d gone to sleep not long after, and her heavy, even breathing is a comfort. He watches the snow gather, and he thinks about what he’ll do next. He’s hoping that they’ll restart the Space Program eventually, because there’s so much potential in it, but he supposes he can’t live his life hoping for it. He could be here for another two, three years before anything happens, if not five or ten. Does he waste his life hoping for another shot at the stars? But what does he do instead?

Honestly, he doesn’t know, and the not knowing is terrifying enough to make him stop thinking about it. There’s no way he’s going back into the air force, and he would die before he was Captain of a ShinRa aircraft. Good to him or not, he’s not about to start flying that jumped up brat of a son around. Fuck that.

He dozes off in the chair, and in the morning, Shera manages to sit upright, and put her feet on the floor. She can’t stand, but she manages that much.

‘I want to have a shower,’ she says, and Cid, looking at her failing to stand up, snorts.

‘A bath,’ he corrects, ‘there’s no way you’ll manage a shower.’

‘I just want to be clean,’ she says, and he nods.

‘I’ll run you a bath,’ he assures her, ‘just hold your chocobos.’

‘I don’t have any chocobos,’ she mumbles, and it sounds oddly sad in a way that hurts behind his ribcage.

He doesn’t know really what to do with the bath, because he hasn’t had one since he was about four, but he’s walked in on her enough times to know that she likes bubbles, so he pours a liberal amount into the running water, checks the temperature, and figures it’s not hot enough to scald.

The problem comes when he realises that unless she’s going to bathe fully-dressed, some small issues are going to arise, which might become slightly bigger issues if they aren’t handled properly.

Namely; she’s going to be naked.

‘Okay,’ he says, standing between the doorways so he can watch the water and her at the same time. ‘How are we going to do this?’

‘I can,’ she starts, and knots her fingers in her t-shirt. ‘If I put a bathrobe on, and you – you help me to the bathroom. Then I can take it off when I’m in there and you don’t have to see anything.’

That still doesn’t solve the problem, because it becomes very clear, when she’s actually on her feet and he’s taking the majority of her weight, that she’s not going to manage to get into the tub without his help.

It’s too small a space for them both, really, but he’s doing his best to be professional about it. She smells like sweat and vomit and toothpaste, and it’s not really a flattering combination, but he can’t take his eyes off of her anyway.

‘Right,’ she says, and clutches at her bathrobe. ‘Maybe if you. Shut your eyes?’

It’s the best they’ve got, so he does so, and he hears the soft flump of her dressing gown hitting the floor. He holds out his hands, which she takes, and even though her skin is the same as it always is, they feel very different now he knows the rest of her has no clothes on.

Very carefully, he steps across until he feels the tub bump his leg, and he braces his arms to let her climb very carefully into the tub. Her weight pulls on his hands, and he lowers them slowly, giving her time to settle into the tub. She starts coughing, and the water sloshes, which makes him open his eyes in something almost resembling panic. His thought is that she might slip, because she’s coughing, and she’s halfway in the water, so he gets a very, very full view of her body, and he pretends he doesn’t, because her head’s bowed as she coughs, and so doesn’t notice that he’s gawking at her.

She’s still got some fantastic muscle tone, but she’s so slender, he’d forgotten, what with her sweaters and her coats, that she was a rake of a girl. She’s pale and there’s freckles dotted here and there across her shoulders and down her belly, and her chin begins to lift so he screws his eyes tight and turns his head to make it look like he wasn’t looking.

Which he wasn’t. Obviously.

The water sloshes again, gently, and her weight pulls on his shoulders, and then settles.

‘I’m in,’ she says, quiet, ‘sorry.’

‘Oh, for fuck sake,’ he says, and chances a look to find her up to her chin in suds, only her knees and fingertips visible. ‘Stop apologising, you’re sick, and it’s my job to look after you.’

Shera purses her lips, and he jerks a thumb over his shoulder.

‘I’m leaving the door open,’ he tells her, ‘but I’ll be – out there. Give me a holler if you need me.’

She nods, a little jerk of her chin, and huddles in the water. He doesn’t want to leave her, because he’s scared she’ll fall asleep and drown, but he can’t stay here. Not really. The only privacy she’s had in the last few days has been when she’s gone to the toilet, she deserves to get clean in peace.

And so off he goes, plodding into the garage to fetch something to tinker with, and then he sits at the table so he has an almost direct line of sight, and he can hear her clear as day. She coughs a lot, and murmurs to herself, the water sloshing and bubbles crackling as she moves in the water, and he finds it’s – it’s – it’s oddly calming, hearing her go about her business. It’s the only sound, besides his heart in his chest, and he’s not so stupid as to not recognise that he’ll miss it when it’s gone.

His hands are greasy and he’s got a smear of oil on his cheek when she calls out to him.

‘Captain?’

‘You alright?’

‘I – I can’t reach my back.’

He looks at the ceiling; the Planet is testing him. But he obligingly wipes his hands on his trousers and goes to find her leaning forward in the tub, arms around her knees and staring at the tiles.

‘I tried,’ she says without turning, and he can see the pinkness in her ears. ‘But I can’t get the breath to turn. Do you mind?’

He snorts, and extends a hand for her to pass him the cloth and soap.

‘It’s usually the other way around,’ he says, perching on the edge of the tub to rub at her back, gentle, knowing her skin is going to be tender.

‘I’ve never washed your back,’ she says.

‘I mean you taking care of me,’ he says, ‘it’s not usually me.’

It sounds like she mumbles, ‘it’s never you,’ but he doesn’t ask her to repeat herself to be sure.

‘I’m not very good at it,’ he admits, and she shrugs.

‘You’re doing fine,’ she says, ‘I’m not dead yet.’

Her belly rumbles, and she pats it.

‘You haven’t eaten much the last few days,’ he says, ‘think you can manage a proper meal?’

She shakes her head. ‘No, I don’t think so. I’m hungry, but I’m not – hungry. I don’t feel like eating. I know I need to. But food just. Doesn’t appeal.’

Cid nods, understands that. He never really feels like eating, but that’s by the by. Her back is clean now, but he keeps the motion going, the gentle up and down and back and forth across her skin. She seems to be enjoying it, so he’s not going to stop until he’s told.

‘Thank you,’ she says, ‘for looking after me.’

‘You’re welcome,’ he replies, quiet.

They lapse into silence for a few moments, and he stops, because it feels wrong to keep going when there’s no need to. Carefully, he scoops a handful of water, lets it rain over her back. She shudders, and her breath hitches.

‘Temperature?’ he asks, and she shakes her head.

‘It’s fine. Just didn’t expect it. I’m – tired.’

‘You want to get out?’

She nods, and he nods in turn.

‘Okay, hang on, I’ll – hm.’

He’s not sure how he’s going to get her upright to get her covered with a towel to hide her from his prying eyes without looking, and he hesitates long enough that Shera bites her lips and tells him that he’s just going to have to look.

‘I’m tired,’ she repeats, ‘and everything hurts. And you’ve seen it all before.’

‘What?’ he asks, because he didn’t think she’d seen him looking.

‘A girl’s body,’ she says. ‘You’ve seen at least one before, surely.’

His turn to flush, and he clears his throat. ‘Well, it’s not exactly – it’s none of your – I don’t see what – fuck off.’

She laughs, trails off into a cough that makes his bones ache, and he gets a towel for her. Between them, they get her upright, and she wraps the towel around herself, thanking him for squeezing his eyes shut. He’s not, however, so convinced of her ability to get out of the tub, so he just scoops her up and gets her out of the bath like he’s moving a particularly leggy bag of flour.

‘You gonna be alright to dry off?’ he asks, and her knees are knocking, so he offers his forearms so she can lower herself to sit on the toilet.

‘I’ll be alright,’ she nods, and coughs some more. ‘Maybe some soup?’

He nods, and plods off to make it. When he returns to the bathroom, she looks exhausted, dark circles and flush with steam and sickness both, but she’s managed to get herself back into her bathrobe and towel-dry her hair, so that’s something.

‘You sure you’re up for soup?’ he asks, ‘I don’t want you falling asleep in it after all my hard work.’

She snorts, and offers him a bleary smile.

‘You got it out a jar Reine gave you.’

He chuckles, and his cheeks hurt, a little bit, with the weight of the smile he gives her.

‘C’mon, up you get.’

He braces her as she hobbles to the table, and sits, but he’s right to be worried about her falling asleep in her soup; she’s got her cheek in one hand and her eyes are closed when he turns back with the soup in a bowl and a couple slices of fresh bread.

‘Oi,’ he hums, ‘four-eyes, get this down your neck first.’

She slurs a noise that might have been a ‘huh,’ and offers him a dozy smile before straightening up. He’s not about to feed her, not a chance, but he knows she isn’t going to get very far with eating by herself. So with a deep breath and a shuffle of his chair, he takes the spoon from her and loads it up with soup.

‘Try and get half the bowl,’ he says, ‘it’s better than nothing.’

She stares at him for a second, and then obligingly opens her mouth.

He refuses to feed her, but there’s no harm in helping her.

She manages about two-thirds of the bowl before her eyes can’t stay open between mouthfuls, and he lets her brace her cheek on her hand again, and her breathing evens out over the course of about four breaths.

‘Shera?’ he whispers, but she doesn’t reply, except for a catch in her throat that sounds almost like a snore.

He huffs out a laugh, and puts the bowl in the sink. Very carefully, fingertips creeping across the breadth of her shoulders, under her knees, and he lifts her. She fits very, very nicely into the space between his arms, and he doesn’t like how much he likes that fact, so he takes her back to her bed as quickly as he can, gets her back under the covers and settled without giving it any further thought, and he certainly doesn’t give the emptiness of his arms any thought either, because why would he think about it, it’s not his business to think about.

She _does_ fit his arms very nicely, though.

He watches her for a minute and figures he needs a shower, hasn’t had one for a couple days, what with watching over her and everything, and thankfully, he doesn’t sweat as much in the winter, so he can get away with no more than a strip wash in the morning. But he needs a shower, five minutes to himself, to think about nothing at all. And she’s asleep, her fever broken, he’s sure she’ll be fine.

In the morning, she’s up and about, sneaking past him in the armchair and he wakes to the sound of the kettle whistling.

‘Huh? Shera? You okay?’

He’s on his feet and moving before he’s really digested what he’s hearing, seeing. She smiles, wrapped up in her bathrobe still, with her hair tangled but dry and in a messy ponytail atop her head. Her glasses are finger-marked, and her cheeks still flushed, but her eyes are bright behind the glass.

‘Captain,’ she says, ‘good morning.’

He pauses, mouth open and one eye squinting, unsure what to say or do, and then she starts coughing. There it is.

‘I thought you’d been magically cured,’ he says, and hip-checks her out of the way to take over with the tea.

‘It doesn’t work like that,’ she tells him between coughs.

‘No,’ he agrees, ‘that’s why I was confused.’

‘I can do that,’ she adds.

‘Sit down,’ he snorts, ‘I’ve got it. You need to rest still. Reine said it would be weeks before you felt right.’

He glances over his shoulder at her; she looks – not caught out, not surprised, not ashamed, but something. She’s watching him, and he offers her a smile.

‘Let me take care of you,’ he says.

‘The students,’ she says, and he waves a tea towel at her.

‘I’ve got them,’ he says, ‘now you’re up and about, kinda, I’ll set them some more work, and fuck knows, they might actually be able to handle teaching themselves for a couple weeks.’

‘We aren’t being paid for that,’ she coughs.

‘Who’s going to fuckin’ tattle?’ he asks, ‘you? Fuck off.’

She wrings her hands, and he abandons the tea for a moment to come and squat next to her.

‘Shera,’ he says, lays one hand over hers, ‘listen. ShinRa can’t take our pay because you’re sick, they’re dumb fucks, but they ain’t that stupid. The kids will survive, and you made plans, I can follow ‘em, get them up and running on reading and research and shit, give them shit to do till you’re well enough to take up classes again.’

She eyeballs him, and then acquiesces with a sigh. ‘Thank you, Captain.’

He squeezes her hands and goes back to the tea.

She gets better slowly. Over the next few weeks, her strength starts to come back. She manages to eat proper meals, and even helps him cook. He doesn’t let her take over, tells her to sit down any time she starts coughing. Once she’s eating proper meals, he lets her sleep upstairs again, with the caveat that she wakes him if she wants to go downstairs in the night. She absolutely does not do this, and he gets so loud that Reine later comes and knocks on the door, tells him that she was informed of shouting on the premises.

‘She’s being stupid!’ Cid yells, pointing at Shera, like a child tattling.

‘I didn’t want to worry him!’ Shera croaks back, and Reine shuts the door on them both.

The spring comes and Shera is still coughing, but she’s back upstairs and free to attend the bathroom unsupervised again. Cid almost misses having her that close, misses hearing her breathing as she slept, the heavy huff and puff of her dreams. He doesn’t admit it, though, instead talks about being glad to have his bed back, his privacy, his time. Shera apologises for taking up so much of it, of having made him look after her, and he tells her to pack that shit in. She has a lot to apologise for, but being sick is not one of them.

‘Just get better,’ he tells her with a shrug one morning as they sit to eat breakfast and drink tea. He’s got a fresh bunch of trainee pilots coming in today, and he needs to be presentable and on time.

‘I will,’ she replies, soft, over the lip of her mug, ‘thanks to you.’

He smiles at her, and taps the table before rising, fishing his lighter out of his pocket.

‘Take it easy today,’ he tells her, ‘there ain’t nothing that needs doing.’

‘I might come and see you,’ she says, ‘get some fresh air, and make sure you’re not being horrible to the students.’

‘I’m never horrible,’ he protests, and she snorts, which just makes her cough.

She waves him off, assures him that she’s fine, and he’s going to be late.

He won’t admit it, as he says goodbye and heads out the door, but he’s looking forward to having her come and see him at work. He’ll not admit that, not a chance. But he thinks it, all the same.


End file.
